Undeception

I have recently been dialoguing with a new full preterist friend, Patrick Stone, about the timing of the millennium. Early on in the conversation, the possibility was raised that the First Resurrection of Rev 20.4-6 occurred at the beginning of the Roman-Jewish war and corresponds to the resurrection of the martyrs at the time the fifth seal is broken (Rev 6.9-11). Patrick has been exploring the viability of this interpretation, and has come out in the affirmative with this extensive article. As a bonus, his interpretation makes some very interesting suggestions about the nature of the Resurrection.

In this article, Patrick utilizes a hermeneutic for reading the recurring symbology of Revelation that I find to be quite plausible for a conscious first-century author: it has the virtues of not viewing Revelation as either a reckless jumble of imagery or a composition of wholly ecstatic origin, decipherable only with an esoteric “key” (usually some ad hoc rubric favorable only to a predetermined interpretation). Of course, one of the biggest problems with interpreting Revelation is its undeniably cryptic usage of numbers, which for futurists has strangely not called into question the idea that the “millennium” must require a time period that at least resembles 1,000 years. Patrick gives a novel but quite simple numerical interpretation that makes some sense of the millennium in relation to other time periods mentioned in Revelation.

This is a large article, and I haven’t read it all the way through yet. Check it out, and let me know what you think!

I have not tried to find a reason to disagree with the majority when it comes to my theological positions. Any reader of this blog will recognize that this has nevertheless happened on occasion. Chiefly, theistic evolution puts me at odds with most evangelicals and full preterism puts me at odds with most believers. In other words, I hold a minority position on protology (the doctrine of first things) and eschatology (the doctrine of last things). From what I know, only a handful of Christians who accept full preterism also accept the scientific consensus on origins; likewise, only a few believers who accept the scientific consensus on origins accept full preterism. I am amazed by this because of how well the two fit together. I’ve been meaning to write a post such as this for some time, so here goes.

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Note: I regularly break what seems to be an unwritten law for blogging that says that, except for minor editorial fixes, one shouldn’t edit posts that add new information without some kind of notification. I have added a little more material to this post to make my arguments more clear; my position remains the same, whereas my explication of my position has hopefully been augmented.

Ah, the infamous, dreaded, and hitherto confusing “unpardonable sin”. What is it? Well, until this week I didn’t know.

Ironically, I first encountered the interpretation I am about to present when hearing someone dismiss it in favor of the interpretation quite popular in evangelical circles nowadays, which is roughly as follows.

Looking at the immediate context of Jesus’ statement on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, we see that the Pharisees were attributing the miraculous works of Jesus to Beelzebub (Mat 12.24), charging Jesus with simply carrying out Satan’s orders. But instead of responding with an angry outburst or a pronouncement of doom upon the Pharisees, Jesus first deconstructed their argument logically (vv. 25-29) and then delivered the surprisingly magnanimous statement,

“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” (vv. 31-32)

Now, so far I’m in agreement with this interpretation. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is defined as rejecting the works of the Holy Spirit and condemning them as evil. But the majority of Protestants don’t allow you to believe that Christians can lose their salvation, so the inference is made that this must be something that is done by unbelievers; additionally, the majority of Christians have believed that the sins of unbelievers are not forgiven anyway. So they tie these things together: the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is simply rejecting the call of the Holy Spirit to salvation. Naturally I thought it was strange that the two men I heard advocating this belief last week are Reformed and so ostensibly don’t believe the Holy Spirit “wastes” his calling on the non-elect. However, not being Reformed myself, my own problem with this interpretation has always been that it seems tautological and smacks of having been retrofitted to match evangelical soteriology. In effect, it paraphrases Jesus’ statement as, “God will forgive any sin you commit (grant salvation to you) except for the sin of not asking forgiveness (accepting salvation).” What a convoluted way of saying something so simple! If that’s what it means, Jesus’ words disguise and lend a solemn air to an altogether obvious and trivial message.

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I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if trends emerged. Well, I just noticed yesterday that there is indeed a small trend. At present, there is a four-way tie for second place: Linguistics, Creation/evolution, Calvinism/Arminianism, and Worship. In first place by two votes is Eschatology/preterism, and in last place I was amused (and a bit disappointed) to see the very topic I just declared I was going to be writing another series on: Bibliology/hermeneutics! I still plan on writing on this in the near future, but to throw a bone to the masses, I decided I’d write one on the clear winner, eschatology. Fairly soon I will write about the intersection of eschatology (the study of last things) and protology (the study of first things) in my theology. I think they work together remarkably well, although I developed them mostly independently. But in the meantime, here’s a question to help me get the pulse of my readership on the issue of eschatology. And I expect at least all eight of you to answer!

The strength of preterist eschatology is its exegesis. I don’t have any interest in going into the issue of church history in this post (check this out for a summary of my position on this matter), but instead I want to examine purely scriptural evidence; this is because most evangelical Christians in the Protestant tradition who make up my core audience believe that no church dogma should be adopted amidst biblical evidence to the contrary. Contingent of course upon your cooperation, I’m not going to write the meat of this post. In asking you the following narrowly delimited question, I want to know (and want you to make sure) that your position has biblical support and is not just an inherited presupposition. Here it is:

Question: Quote or reference the one passage or verse that you think most clearly promises a return of Christ yet future to us. If you do not believe there is a future coming, state so, and respectfully interact with those who do.

Stipulation: Please do not use as your reference a passage that only presents another eschatological event that you think has to happen before, with, or after the next coming of Christ (e.g. the Resurrection, Romans 8′s groaning creation, etc.), but rather provide an out-and-out reference to an advent that has not yet occurred (whether or not you think of it as a “second” coming).

Why that stipulation? Any evangelical affirming a future return should presumably have a scriptural basis for that belief, and I want to see if it can be found when you strip away complex theological constructs; if there is in fact at least one passage that explicitly predicts a still future Coming, I would like to see it produced. If you believe in a future coming strictly on philosophical rather than biblical grounds, I would be interested in knowing that as well.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation!

A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a new doctrine?“

All authorities concur in the declaration that “when all these things should have been done” “the End” should come: that “the mystery of God should be finished as he had declared to His servants the prophets”: it should be completed: time should now be no more: the End of all things (so foretold) should be at hand, and be fully brought to pass: in these days should be fulfilled all that had been spoken of Christ (and of His church) by the prophets: or, in other words, when the gospel should have been preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations, and the power of the Holy People be scattered (abroad), then should the End come, then should all these things be finished. I need now only say, all these things have been done: the old and elementary system passed away with a great noise; all these predicted empires have actually fallen, and the new kingdom, the new heaven and earth, the new Jerusalem – all of which were to descend from God, to be formed by His power, have been realised on earth; all these things have been done in the sight of all the nations; God’s holy arm has been made bare in their sight: His judgments have prevailed, and they remain for an everlasting testimony to the whole world. His kingdom has come, as it was foretold it should, and His will has, so far, been done; His purposes have been finished; and, from that day to the extreme end of time, it will be the duty, as indeed it will be the great privilege of the Church, to gather into its bosom the Jew, the Greek, the Scythian, the Barbarian, bond and free; and to do this as the Apostles did in their days–in obedience, faith and hope.

The quote belongs to Dr. Samuel Lee, who translated Eusebius’ Theophania in 1843. I sincerely apologize for the misattribution and for the argument I tried to make from it. Read my original post to see my revision of it, which now presents an actual quote from Eusebius affirming Matthew 24′s apocalypse as having occurred in the first century. This is not the same thing as full preterism; for instance, Eusebius in the Theophania actually gives the routine line from the ECF about a future resurrection of the “selfsame” body, which full preterism rejects. Does this harm my theology? Not exactly.

Think of it this way: the ECF disagreed about a lot of things. They agreed on a number of things as well. On the things they disagreed upon, we are told to believe that at least one of the parties was wrong and one was right; on the things they agreed upon, it is the very truth of God. But why should we believe that on any one of those issues, any of the parties was correct? Could the issues upon which they agreed have been blind shots in the dark that happened to hit the same, but wrong, target? I see no scriptural mandate that the ECF had to be right on anything, much less everything. The ECF weren’t even mentioned in the Bible. Rather, it was the Apostles that the Holy Spirit was going to lead into all truth, and that’s recorded in Scripture. People, listen: most of my friends know that there is no more fierce advocate for studying and appreciating the ECF and the teaching of believers gone before us than I, but can we ever accept their words over the Bible? I think not. And for me the biblical evidence for full preterism and against a future end of the world is insurmountable.

So take it as you will. Thanks, anonymous poster, for “undeceiving” me: I welcome and covet your interaction on these issues.

I was in college. In my fourth of five years, I heard about a professor who was fairly “liberal” in theology. A friend of mind took his class on Revelation, and was disturbed by how good the arguments were that Revelation was written about first century events. When my friend explained to me in brief terms the professor’s argument, I, too, was apalled – and intrigued. Something about the whole thing rang true. However, I would put it somewhat on the backburner for a little while.

By the time I was out of college, I was ready to dive in and find out if there was anything to this belief system. A few internet searches, and I found that the name for this scandalous view was “preterism”. I looked at a lot of arguments, asked a lot of questions. I discovered that there are two main types of preterists. Partial preterists see only some of prophecy as related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and hold out for a future something or other (usually the Second Coming and the Resurrection) in the future. Full preterists, the main type of preterist with whom I corresponded on the theological forums, believe that all eschatological events were fulfilled in those events of the first century. Around this time I was starting to see the Bible as literature rather than as a magic text independent of its original cultural context. I saw that the prophetic diction in the New Testament was not a brand new creation, but that it was built upon the tradition of the Old Testament prophecies, and with this revelation and what it did to the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24-25), I was a preterist. Of some sort, anyway.

Then came to a momentous (and stupid) decision: I would decide whether full preterism was true or not by praying and then reading through all the epistles, trying to see if it all made sense from a full preterist standpoint. I didn’t get all the way through before the inevitable happened: I could not reconcile the relevant eschatological passages as I understood them in my fully dispensationalist mindset with the view of preterism. Surprise, surprise, huh?

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Who said this?

But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those which are (now) before us. For He named the whole Jewish people, the children of the City; and the Temple, He styled their House. And thus He testified, that they should, on their own wicked account, bear the vengeance thus to be inflicted. And, it is right we should wonder at the fulfilment of this prediction, since at no time did this place undergo such an entire desolation as this was. He pointed out moreover, the cause of their desolation when He said, “If thou hadst known, even in this day, the things of thy peace:” intimating too His own coming, which should be for the peace of the whole world. But, when ye shall see it reduced by armies, know ye that which comes upon it, to be a final and full desolation and destruction. He designates the desolation of Jerusalem, by the destruction of the Temple, and the laying aside of those services which were, according to the law of Moses, formerly performed within it. The manner moreover of the captivity, points out the war. of which He spoke; “For (said He) there shall be (great) tribulation upon the land, and great wrath upon this people : and they shall fall by the edge of the sword.” We can learn too, from the writings of Flavius Josephus, how these things took place in their localities, and how those, which had been foretold by our Saviour, were, in fact, fulfilled. On this account He said, “Let those who are in its borders not enter into it, since these are the days of vengeance, that all may be fulfilled which has been written.” Any one therefore, who desires it, may learn the results of these things from the writings of Josephus.

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